Literature and Art

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Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on August 9, 2011 at 3:13am

Oh yes, overreading is possible. Be careful what you wish for. All through my 20s I longed for someone to pay me to read. Then they did, for 22+ years, nonstop, 3 to 5 manuscripts at a time. ...

Collaged and wired book photos, front from slight angle, and back:

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on August 8, 2011 at 11:20pm

 

Just today I took a few photos of two old books that I collaged a bit and encased loosely in wire, and then hung on the wall from part of the wire in the back.  This happened three or four years ago, and they've become such a "fixture" on the studio wall that only today did it occur to me you guys might like to see them.  They represent (1) the question of what is happening to the book in today's technological age and (2) are books gone from me due to overreading after 22+ years of editing (a question not expected to be answered -- it was just part of what was on my mind when I did these works).

Anyway, I'll post later tonight if they download from the camera properly, which I THINK they will ~

 

Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on August 3, 2011 at 2:04pm

thank you for that bifidus! ;-D

not being much of a reader, i probably won't ever get through any rilke unless there happens to be some kind of decent audiobook (i will have to look)!!

 

Comment by Bifidus Jones on August 3, 2011 at 1:57pm

Thanks for the wonderful George Eliot quote, Nancy. The thing about Rilke, Super Hero, is that he understood so much about the human condition at such a young age. "Seeing" was central to him. Due to his obsession with death, the task was urgent, yet he understood that to "see" takes patience. Waiting. And for Rilke, I think, it is not only the past/present/future that he found compelling, but what is visible/invisible. Which is why he often wrote about ghosts. One of his abilities as a writer was to visualize what was invisible to others.That's why I continue to read him. That, and his heart-turning use of language.

Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on August 3, 2011 at 11:40am

i don't get rilke.

perhaps you can explain to me.

i've never read, but i've heard countless references to him.

he has so invaded popular literature it astounds me.

i have a book of poetry but i'm not much of a reader,

and usually amanda has a pretty vast knowledgebase, she i kind of a walking encyclopedia, but she doesn't know anything about rilke.

she didn't even know the name when i mentioned him the other day.

Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on August 3, 2011 at 11:37am

ok, so this is getting mildly off topic, but i'll keep it short. i've been kind of emotionally overloaded all night and talking about ana mendieta brought up memories i had forgotten completely about. her art is kind of disturbing on a surface level. nudity and blood, and you can tell there is a lot of pain behind the works. when gabriel died i was pretty much anything BUT an artist, i've only been making art since around february. but i found her works probably around when he died, perhaps a day or two earlier and perhaps it was after - but i found in her a kind of comfort; and i remember explaining it to one of the other parents at my daughter's school like so: it makes it hurt less to look on her art and see her pain, and to think to myself "it could always be worse."

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on August 3, 2011 at 4:28am

In this you are certainly not alone:  "but when i create art, it is like perpetuating my love and releasing my pain; or at least being able to bear it."

I sometimes worry about the fate of sympathy in today's world.

Here is something I meant to post a few days ago when it turned up in my fifty thousand papers, since we were discussing the poet Rilke a few weeks ago and Theresa made me a really beautiful mail-art piece based on him.  My husband and I lost a dear friend suddenly ten years ago, and at his memorial service my husband read this by Rilke (Mitchell translation).  I'd completely forgotten:

BUDDHA IN GLORY

 

Center of all centers, core of cores,

almond self-enclosed and growing sweet --

all this universe, to the furthest stars

and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

 

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;

your vast shell reaches into endless space,

and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.

Illuminated in your infinite peace,

 

a billion stars go spinning through the night,

blazing high above your head.

But in you is the presence that will be,

when all the stars are dead.

 

 

Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on August 3, 2011 at 3:21am

i'm not the best interpreter in the world;

 

i relate to this partial quote:

sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force,

only changing its form, as forces do

gabriel's death has been heavy on my mind since angie put me up to my cute piece, and only intensified by the loss of what i had once considered my best friend but who has turned out to be a fraud. amanda is going through it too as his birthday is approaching this weekend.

 

i will admit, i am not the most sympathetic person;

but i can relate to sorrow being an indestructible force.

my sorrow has driven my art immensely this year.

in wave upon wave.

 

and as for the transformation of sorrow, i don't know much of sympathy, but i have learned to transform it into art. and if i had not taken up art when i did, i assuredly would have killed myself to contain so much sadness as i have in me. but when i create art, it is like perpetuating my love and releasing my pain; or at least being able to bear it.

 

--

 

in other news, i've got amanda reading oryx and crake (one of my favorites) and she actually likes it (which isn't often i give her something she will open to read, let alone LIKE!!!)

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on August 3, 2011 at 2:59am

Here is one of my favorite George Eliot quotes, from "Adam Bede":

 

For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had not outlived his sorrow -- had not felt it slip from him as a temporary burden, and leave him the same man again.  Do any of us?  God forbid.  It would be a poor result of all our anguish and all our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it -- if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness.  Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy -- the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love.

 

Comment by 1cgqtuoblpeqc on August 3, 2011 at 12:35am

usually these are just lightly inspired by what i listen to,

but amanda was really into this audiobook last night

while we were listening to it before sleep,

telling me about the plotlines and some of the themes.

(she's a lit major at the university and is probably going to go into grad school for literature as well)

again this morning as we were chatting in the kitchen, she was talking more about the book and it just got me thinking about it a lot.

 

one of the things she pointed out is the maps versus territories issues, something real versus the idea of something which ties into a lot of the stuff i've been thinking about with my FREE ART and copyrights. the tangible versus the intangible. it has a character denny who collects rocks and brings them to the apartment. but he carries them in a baby blanket because people get weirded out when they see him just carrying rocks around on the bus.

 

there's a rather humorous bit in the book concerning this, and i will quote a few lines of it:

 

"So what's with these rocks," I say.
Denny's opened the front door, and he's standing there while I turn off some lights.
In the doorway, he says, "I don't know. But rocks are like, you know, land. It's like these
rocks are a kit. It's land, but with some assembly required. You know, landowner-ship,
but for right now it's indoors."
I say, "For sure."
We go out and I lock the door behind us. The night sky is all fuzzy with stars. All out
of focus. There's no moon.
Outside on the sidewalk, Denny looks up at the mess and says, "What I think
happened is when God wanted to make the earth out of chaos, the first thing he did was
just get a lot of rocks together."
While we walk, his new obsessive compulsion has my eyes already scanning vacant
lots and places for rocks we can pick up.
Walking down to the bus stop with me, still with the pink baby blanket folded over
his shoulder, Denny says, "I only take the rocks nobody wants." He says, "I'll just get one
rock every night. Then I figure I'll figure out the next part, you know— next."
It's such a creepy idea. Us taking home rocks. We're collecting land.
"You know that girl, Daiquiri?" Denny says. "The dancer with the cancery mole." He
says, "You didn't sleep with her, did you? "We're shoplifting real property. Burgling terra
firma.
And I say, "Why not?"
We're just an outlaw couple of land rustlers.

 

amanda tells me that this is chuck's personal favorite character he's invented, Denny.

 

there are several other elements from the book that i've included in my collage, and i feel it is probably the most true to storyline collage i've made to date. ;-D

 

the three pictures of the girl bending over backwards are Ana Mendieta, who is one of my favorite artists to browse at the public library here. She was a student at iowa for a time, and this is her Rape Scene which was photographed here in iowa city! There is a portion in the book where the main character is raping a girl, but it is consentual rape. it's a strange bit having to do with one of the themes of sexual addiction, and she is having him "rape" her with a cold knife and pantyhose on his head because it gets her off, but everything he does is wrong and she keeps jumping out of character in order to tell him how to rape her properly. Chuck is a strange author, but certainly is always interesting in his plots!

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